Ross shows his fashion sense by bringing the IBMMacTop.
Joey and Jay quickly step in as MCs for this event. Unfortunately David Crow was taken very ill but is now recovering.
Ross and Joey present Start Page, I really enjoyed this presentation. I think this is going to be a great product! It was also great to see James Woods. When is he going to do a DemoCamp presentation?
Aside from Ross's presentation on Start page, the most interesting presentation for me was on 'Blogscope'. It is a U of T Comp Eng. research project and is to improve search for high volume text streams (a.k.a. blogs). When I see this kind of project that I feel assured that the students have their job secured at Google, if that is their chosen path in life. They are fast become search algorithm experts.
But it also interests me that there is still so much research to be in Search towards its improvement. BlogScope provides information analysis that goes beyond Google Analytics. It is effectively a step towards a multi-dimensional seach engine. The axis being time (bursts of writing on one topic) and keyword (relevant words that appear around the keyword entered by the user).
This makes me ask why Google is not simply continuing to develop its core competency - better and better search. Adding dimensions to search, search audio content and search pictures (Riya) I don't think it would be hard for Google with its resources to copy what Riya has done.